In the open-source hardware development and distribution model, designs are created collaboratively and published openly. This enables anyone to study, modify, improve, and produce the design—for one’s own use or for sale. Open-source hardware gives users full control over the products they use while unleashing innovation—compared to the limits of proprietary research and development.

This practice is transforming passive consumers of “black box” technologies into a new breed of user-producers. For consumers, open-source hardware translates into better products at a lower cost, while providing more relevant, directly applicable solutions compared to a one-size-fits-all approach. For producers, it means lower barriers to entry and a consequent democratization of production. The bottom line is a more efficient economy—one that bypasses the artificial scarcity created by exclusive rights—and instead focuses on better and faster development of appropriate technologies.

Open-source hardware is less than a decade old. It started as an informal practice in the early 2000s with fragmented cells of developers sharing instructions for producing physical objects in the spirit of open-source software. It has now become a movement with a recognized definition, specific licenses, an annual conference, and several organizations to support open practices. The expansion of open-source hardware is also visible in a proliferation of open-source plans for making just about anything, from 3-D printers, microcontrollers, and scientific equipment, to industrial machines, cars, tractors, and solar-power generators.

As the movement takes shape, the next major milestone is the development of standards for efficient development and quality documentation. The aim here is to deliver on the potential of open-source products to meet or exceed industry standards—at a much lower cost—while scaling the impact of collaborative development practices.

The Internet brought about the information revolution, but an accompanying revolution in open-source product development has yet to happen. The major blocks are the absence of uniform standards for design, documentation, and development process; accessible collaborative design platforms (CAD); and a unifying set of interface standards for module-based design—such that electronics, mechanical devices, controllers, power units, and many other types of modules could easily interface with one another.

Can unleashed collaboration catapult open-source hardware from its current multimillion dollar scale to the next trillion dollar economy?

One of the most promising scenarios for the future of open source hardware is a glocal supply chain made up of thousands of interlinked organizations in which collaboration and complementarity are the norm. In this scenario, producers at all levels—from hobbyists to commercial manufacturers—have access to transparent fabrication tools, and digital plans circulate freely, enabling them to build on each other quickly and efficiently.

The true game changers are the fabrication machines that transform designs into objects. While equipment such as laser cutters, CNC machine tools, and 3-D printers has been around for decades, the breakthrough comes from the drastically reduced cost and increased access to these tools. For example, online factories enable anyone to upload a design and receive the material object in the mail a few days later. A proliferation of open-source digital fabrication tools, hackerspaces, membership-based shops, fab labs, micro factories, and other collaborative production facilities are drastically increasing access and reducing the cost of production. It has become commonplace for a novice to gain ready access to state-of-art productive power.

On the design side, it’s now possible for 70 engineers to work in parallel with a collaborative CAD package to design the airplane wing for a Boeing 767 in 1 hour. This is a real-world proof of concept of taking development to warp speed—though achieved with proprietary tools and highly paid engineers. With a widely available, open-source collaborative CAD package and digital libraries of design for customization, it would be possible for even a novice to create advanced machines—and for a large group of novices to create advanced machines at warp speed. Complex devices, such as cars, can be modeled with an inviting set of Lego-like building blocks in a module-based CAD package. Thereafter, CNC equipment can be used to produce these designs from off-the-shelf parts and locally available materials. Efficient industrial production could soon be at anyone’s fingertips.

Sharing instructions for making things is not a novel idea. However, the formal establishment of an open-source approach to the development and production of critical technologies is a disruptive force. The potential lies in the emergence of many significant and scalable enterprises built on top of this model. If such entities collaborate openly, it becomes possible to unleash the efficiency of global development based on free information flows. This implies a shift from “business as usual” to an efficient economy in which environmental and social justice are part of the equation.

Catarina Mota is a New York City-based Portuguese maker and open-source advocate who cofounded the openMaterials (openMaterials.org) research project, which is focused on open-source and DIY experimentation with smart materials. She is both a PhD candidate at FCSHUNL and a visiting scholar at NYU, and she has taught workshops on topics such as hi-tech materials and simple circuitry. Catarina is a fellow of the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal, co-chair of the Open Hardware Summit, a TEDGlobal 2012 fellow, and member of NYC Resistor.

Marcin Jakubowski graduated from Princeton and earned a PhD Fusion Physics from the University of Wisconsin. In 2003 Marcin founded the Open Source Ecology (OpenSourceEcology.org) network of engineers, farmers, and supporters. The group is working on the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), which is an open-source, DIY toolset of 50 different industrial machines intended for the construction of a modern civilization (http://vimeo.com/16106427).

Elektor is kicking off 2013 with a variety of new-and-improved offerings for its members: exciting electronics projects, new websites, a fresh e-newsletter, and more. Watch the following video to learn about the intriguing options and take a look inside the castle! Elektor is more than a paper magazine!

Are you planning an IR communications project? Do you need to choose a microcontroller? Check out the information Cornell University Senior Lecturer Bruce Land sent us about inexpensive IR communication with Atmel ATmega microcontrollers. It’s another example of the sort of indispensable information covered in Cornell’s excellent ECE4760 course.

Land informed us:

I designed a basic packet communication scheme using cheap remote control IR receivers and LED transmitters. The scheme supports 4800 baud transmission,
with transmitter ID and checksum. Throughput is about twenty 20-character packets/sec. The range is at least 3 meters with 99.9% packet receive and moderate (<30 mA) IR LED drive current.

I improved Remin’s protocol by setting up the link software so that timing constraints on the IR receiver AGC were guaranteed to be met. It turns out that there are several types of IR reciever, some of which are better at short data bursts, while others are better for sustained data. I chose a Vishay TSOP34156 for its good sustained data characteristics, minimal burst timing requirements, and reasonable data rate. The system I build works solidly at 4800 baud over IR with 5 characters of overhead/packet (start token, transmitter number, 2 char checksum , end token). It works with increasing packet loss up to 9000 baud.

The RC circuit acts a low-pass filter on the power to surpress spike noise and improve receiver performance. The RC circuit should be close to the receiver. The range with a 100 ohm resistor is at least 3 meters with the transmitter roughly pointing at the receiver, and a packet loss of less then 0.1 percent. To manage burst length limitations there is a short pause between characters, and only 7-bit characters are sent, with two stop bits. The 7-bit limit means that you can send all of the printing characters on the US keyboard, but no extended ASCII. All data is therefore sent as printable strings, NOT as raw hexidecimal.

Land’s writeup also includes a list of programs and packet format information.

Most Recent Embedded Tech-Related Acquisition: He recently received a single-board fanless PC with a solid-state hard drive as a gift.

Current Projects: Alex is further developing the NakedCPU platform he wrote about in his two-part article series, “The NakedCPU,” (Circuit Cellar 259–260, 2012).

Thoughts on the Future of Embedded Technology: Alex says he’s worried that embedded solutions are becoming less transparent. He remembers working with one system that had several DVDs of examples and libraries but it didn’t have a comprehensive guide to the system’s architecture. “As a researcher and someone who wants to get to the bottom of things, such a situation is frustrating. This is certainly my personal researcher’s view. I am not commenting on the application side of increasingly complicated embedded systems.”

How do you clean a clean-energy generating system? With a microcontroller (and a few other parts, of course). An excellent example is US designer Scott Potter’s award-winning, Renesas RL78 microcontroller-based Electrostatic Cleaning Robot system that cleans heliostats (i.e., solar-tracking mirrors) used in solar energy-harvesting systems. Renesas and Circuit Cellar magazine announced this week at DevCon 2012 in Garden Grove, CA, that Potter’s design won First Prize in the RL78 Green Energy Challenge.

This image depicts two Electrostatic Cleaning Robots set up on two heliostats. (Source: S. Potter)

The nearby image depicts two Electrostatic Cleaning Robots set up vertically in order to clean the two heliostats in a horizontal left-to-right (and vice versa) fashion.

The Electrostatic Cleaning Robot in place to clean

Potter’s design can quickly clean heliostats in Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants. The heliostats must be clean in order to maximize steam production, which generates power.

The robot cleaner prototype

Built around an RL78 microcontroller, the Electrostatic Cleaning Robot provides a reliable cleaning solution that’s powered entirely by photovoltaic cells. The robot traverses the surface of the mirror and uses a high-voltage AC electric field to sweep away dust and debris.

Parts and circuitry inside the robot cleaner

Object oriented C++ software, developed with the IAR Embedded Workbench and the RL78 Demonstration Kit, controls the device.

Stephan Lubbers enjoys sensing technology. He is a creative engineer and inventor whose designs often build on his need to monitor data and figure out how things work. Steve and I recently discussed some of his designs, his contest-entry process, his thoughts on the future of embedded technology, and what’s currently happening on his workbench.—Nan Price, Associate Editor

NAN: Where are you located?

Stephan Lubbers in his workspace

STEVE: I live in Dayton, OH.

NAN: Where did you go to school and what did you study?

STEVE: My formal education is a BS in Computer Science from Wright State University, Fairborn, OH. Outside of schools, I’ve taught myself many things ranging from radio electronics to achieving an extra class amateur radio license, to assorted computer languages, to FPGA programming—all from just sitting down and saying, “Let’s learn this.”

NAN: Tell us about your current occupation.

STEVE: I am employed as a Senior Software Engineer at Beijing West Industries, where I develop embedded systems that go under the hood of high-end automobiles. (BWI is the owner of what was once General Motors’s Suspension and Brakes components company.) If your “Service Vehicle Soon” light comes on, I may have written the code behind it.

NAN: Tell us about your technical interests.

STEVE: My technical interests fall into two categories. I like to build systems around new sensing technologies and I build systems to support ham radio.

I never really thought about specific technical interests until I was asked this question. Looking at the Circuit Cellar contests I’ve entered and exploring my parts closet, I discovered that I have an abundance of sensors and sensor systems. When a new sensing device comes out, I often get one, play with it, and then look around for something to do with it. That usually results in an invention of some kind. I’ve analyzed the motion of rodeo bulls and dogs with microelectromechanical (MEMS) accelerometers, tracked eyeball movements with optical sensors, and computed automobile speeds using both GPS and microwave electronics. I don’t know if it is cause or effect, but I was always amazed by the “tricorder” on Star Trek. Do I like sensors because of Scotty and Mr. Spock? Or did I watch Star Trek because of the gadgets? I don’t know.

My love of electronics led me to amateur radio at a young age. I wasn’t as much interested in talking to other people as I was in exploring the technology that enables people to talk. I had a little success building RF devices but found that I had a real knack for digital systems. I’ve used that ability to create satellite tracking controllers, antenna switchers, and computer-to-radio interfaces.

NAN: How long have you been reading Circuit Cellar?

STEVE: I’ve subscribed to Circuit Cellar since Issue 1. I still believe the tagline that said “Inside the Box Still Counts.”

NAN: You’ve written four articles for Circuit Cellar. Some focus on data logging, monitoring, and analysis. For example, your article “Precision Motion-Sensing System Analyzer” (Circuit Cellar 192, 2006) is about a microcontroller-based, motion-sensing system for bull riders. What inspired you to create this system?

STEVE: Several things came together to spark the creation of the “Precision Motion-Sensing System Analyzer,” a.k.a. the BuckyMeter. I had already begun work on a motion-logging system but had no clear goal in mind. Shortly after the logger started working, Circuit Cellar announced its 2005 design contest. I had a short-term goal of entering the contest with my data logger. But what should I log?

My dad provided the suggestion to strap the logger onto the back of a rodeo bull. My parents had become fascinated by the sport of professional bull riding and thought it would be fun to get behind the scenes by doing this science experiment. One of the questions I had when designing the system was: “What kind of maximum G force can I expect to see?” Nobody had an answer, but the doctors responsible for repairing bull riders thought it was an interesting question. They, too, wanted to know that answer. That question opened a few doors to give us access to some bulls. EE Times printed a humorous article about my experience strapping an electronic device on the back of 1,200 lb of angry cow. It was definitely an experience!

The BuckyMeter hardware went through several iterations. In the end, an off-the-shelf Motorola Z-Star evaluation module could be used to instrument the bull with the added bonus of wireless data logging.

The project died out after a trip to instrument competition-grade bulls from American Bucking Bull, Inc. (ABBI). In hindsight, I learned an important lesson about managing customer expectations. I went to Oklahoma on a mission to collect data and try out an engineering prototype. I think the people I met with were expecting to see a polished product. Their impression, after our meeting, was that an electronic scoring aid was too slow and too complicated.

NAN: Another article, “Electronic Data Logging and Analysis: A How-To Guide for Building a Seizure-Monitoring System” (Circuit Cellar 214, 2008), describes an Atmel ATmega32-based electronic monitoring system that enables pet owners and vets to monitor epileptic seizure patterns in dogs. How does the microcontroller factor into the design?

STEVE: My seizure monitor was an offshoot of the rodeo bull motion-sensing system. The original processor had way more power than was needed and it was difficult to hand solder the part. With a working baseline from the BuckyMeter, it was easy to pick a different chip to work with. I had some experience with Atmel AVRs from a previous Circuit Cellar contest, so I looked at its product line. I had a good estimate for RAM/ROM requirements, and I decided it would be nice to have additional SPI channels to interface with the accelerometers. That led to the selection of the ATmega32. It didn’t hurt that another Atmel contest popped up in 2006 when I was in the middle of the design.

I have always wanted to expand my data beyond a single patient to see if my theory held up, so I supplied systems to some other people with epileptic dogs. This required continuous design updates mostly to keep up with outdated parts. Unfortunately, I never got any data back from the systems I gave away. My pet (and science guinea pig) passed away a few years ago, so I don’t have a subject to continue with this project.

NAN: At the end of your article, “Doppler Radar Design” (Circuit Cellar 243, 2010), you note that upgrades to the project (e.g., an enclosure and a portable power supply) could make the system “an easy-to-use mobile device.” Tell us about the design. Did you end up implementing any of those upgrades?

STEVE: Doppler Radar Design has been my most popular project. I get e-mails all the time asking how to reproduce it. As I stated in the article, the RF section is now hard to come by and expensive. Not being an RF engineer, I haven’t been able to recommend replacement parts.

The project started when my dad loaned me the microwave electronics to play with. He had wired them up for two-way ham radio communications. I couldn’t manage to make any radio contact with anybody but myself, so I started looking for other experiments to perform. In one of the experiments, I learned how to make a motion detector. From that, I decided to try to turn the project into a speed radar.

This project took help from a lot of other people because I really didn’t know what I was doing. Some radar discussions on the Internet outlined the basic design for Doppler speed radar, so I followed the suggestions, essentially a transmitter/receiver pair supplied by my borrowed Gunnplexer and a frequency detector (FFT) to show the Doppler shift of the returned signal. Accounting for the radio frequency in use gives you the speed of the reflected target, which in my case was a car.

When I discovered Ramsey Electronics sells a radar kit for $100, I decided that my Doppler radar was really just a science experiment. It was educational for me, but for everyone who contacted me just wanting to have their own radar, the Ramsey option was cheaper, more accurate, and already packaged for portability.

I did get some helpful hints from Alan Rutz at SHF Microwave Parts Company, who suggested something called a dielectric resonator oscillator (DRO) could be used in place of the Gunnplexer I used. The advantage of his approach is that DROs are available and cost about $20. I have not yet been successful with this upgrade.

STEVE: The KartTracker came about one day when the neighborhood NASCAR fans went out racing karts. We wondered how fast we went, so the local engineer (me) set about finding out.

I started with a GPS receiver and a data logger and drove around the track to see what happened. As it turns out, GPS receivers automatically give you your speed! That was too easy, so I started looking for more features.

The next couple of races I watched, I tried to pay attention to more than just the action and saw that teams were very concerned with lap times. Well, I could time my laps, but that didn’t seem very interesting or complicated enough. Then I saw a qualifying session where the TV showed a continuous real-time comparison between two cars. That seemed cool! If I could build that, I could race myself to see if I was doing better or worse.

So, the KartTracker concept was born. A GPS receiver feeds continuous position data into a Renesas RX62N board. The software continuously compares my time at some location against the last time I was there. It’s like looking at the lap time, but it updates every couple of seconds so you have continuous feedback.

All the timing data is retained so later we can compare times against each other and brag about who went the fastest. I would like to broadcast the times back to the spectators, but that radio is a project for another day.

STEVE: My eyePOD hands-free USB Mouse is a head-mounted motion sensor that controls the mouse cursor on a PC. By moving your head, the mouse moves around the screen. You wink your eyes to click the mouse buttons. The goal was to produce a PC interface for someone who couldn’t use a typical mouse, with a secondary goal of teaching me about USB. There are some problems in certain lighting conditions, but overall it works pretty well.

After about a dozen contest entries, I have a bit of a process for creating an entry. I hope I don’t hurt my future chances by sharing my secrets, but since you asked, three things need to line up for me to start a project (contest or otherwise): I need an idea, I need some technology, and I need motivation.

Author James Rollins says, “Don’t ask where the ideas come from.” But, if you have to know, his story ideas come from a box. My contest ideas come from a little red notebook. In reality, we don’t know where the actual ideas come from, but when we get ideas we put them in the box (or book) and make a withdrawal when we need to use an idea.

Part two is that there needs to be a technology that will support the idea. I couldn’t build a rodeo bull monitor until there were cheap accelerometers available. I couldn’t build the KartTracker without a GPS. So, keep a list of technologies you like in your box of ideas.

Finally, you need motivation to execute the project. At work, your boss provides the motivation in the form of a paycheck. At home, you might have a dog that needs help or a neighbor who supplies beer for the answer of how fast his kart is. When I put the three pieces together, I have the starting point for a project. Apply your abilities and start building.

The only biggie after that is time management. Somewhere there is a deadline you need to meet. Do consistent work on your project and prioritize what needs to be done. I have a knack for drawing a line through the critical parts of a project to make sure I have something working when the end is near. You can always go back and improve a working project, but if you have too many half-built features, you have nothing to fall back on when time runs out. A good example is the radio link for the KartTracker. Without GPS and timing software, the project would be nothing. When I had time remaining, I added file I/O and data storage on an SD card. Nice features, but they weren’t necessary to demonstrate the project. The radio link fell by the wayside when entry time came up.

Finally, don’t forget the book report at the end. The judges need to know what you did, so you need to write about it. Who knows? Circuit Cellar might like what you wrote and decide to turn it into an article.

NAN: Have you recently purchased any embedded technology tools to help you with your data logging, monitoring, and analysis projects?

STEVE: My most recent tech purchase was an iPod Touch funded from a recent Circuit Cellar publication. Before you say, “That’s not embedded,” let me explain. I tend to make the user interfaces to my projects simple and to the point. Circuit Cellar contest deadlines don’t lend themselves to creating a new fancy interface for each project. Instead, I would offload debugging, control, and extra features to an external system. I started out using RS-232 serial to a PC. For portability and speed, I moved to a PalmPilot with an infrared data access (IrDA) interface. A Bluetooth or Wi-Fi interface seems like a logical progression to me. The iPod Touch has these interfaces and it leaves me with a new gadget to play with.

A more embedded acquisition is the Texas Instruments MetaWatch. If you haven’t seen one of these, it’s a stylish digital watch that talks to your smartphone. For the more adventurous, the source code is available so you can add your own features. There must be something great that I can do with a wrist-mounted computer, I just haven’t had the “ah-ha” moment yet.

NAN: Are you currently working on or planning any embedded-design-related projects?

STEVE: I call my current project the SeeingEye for a dog. The blind have used guide dogs since the 16th century. That’s a huge debt man owes his best friend! To help repay that debt, I’m creating a twist on the seeing eye dog by creating a seeing eye for a friend’s vision-impaired dog. Using the sensors and technology robots use for collision avoidance, the SeeingEye will detect obstacles in a dog’s path. The trick seems to be the user interface to convey the collision avoidance information and training the dog to respond correctly to the stimulus. I figure if microchips in robots can learn to avoid walls, then puppy neurons should be able to do the same thing. I still have more work to do to figure out how to get the sensor to stay in place.

SeeingEye for dogs, circuit board

SeeingEye for dogs, in “use”

NAN: Do you have any thoughts on the future of embedded technology?

STEVE: As a builder of embedded systems, I am amazed at all of the things we can do with high-speed processors and multiple megabytes of memory. It seems like if we can imagine it, we can build it.

As a user of embedded technologies, it sometimes seems like the engineers are trying to be too clever by stuffing anything they can into the box whether those features are needed or not.

The complexity of some devices has skyrocketed to the point that stability has been affected and users don’t know what features they have or how to use them. We now take for granted a constant stream of software updates to our devices and press reset when it doesn’t work as desired.

Einstein is credited with saying, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” I’d like to see the industry adopt Einstein’s advice and the “Keep it simple, stupid!” (KISS) principle to help us manage the growing complexities. We’d spend less time serving our devices by trying to make them work and more time being served by our devices as they flawlessly do the work we want done.

As you might have noticed, parts of this issue look a bit different than the publication you’re used to reading. You can see a slightly updated layout, some different colors, and a few new sections. We’ve made these changes to reflect where we are today and where we’re taking this magazine in the months to come. It’s all about forward progress. Here are the broad strokes:

FRESHENED UP LAYOUT

We’re planning an exciting layout redesign for 2013. The layout will be modern, clean, and engaging, but its fonts and colors won’t distract you from what you’re reading—professional engineering content. Since the new layout is still an issue or two away, we’re presenting you with this freshened up issue to mark the transition to 2013. We hope you like the changes.

CLIENT PROFILES

On page 20 you’ll find a new section that will appear frequently in the coming months. The purpose of our client profiles is to shine a light on one company per month and bring you an exclusive offer for useful products or services.

TECH THE FUTURE

Last month we ran Steve Ciarcia’s final “Priority Interrupt” editorial. This month we’re introducing a new section, “Tech the Future.” The EE/ECE community is on the verge of major breakthroughs in the fields of microcomputing, wireless communication, robotics, and programming. Each month, we’ll use page 80 to present some of the fresh ideas, thought-provoking research projects, and new embedded design-related endeavors from innovators who are working on the groundbreaking technologies of tomorrow.

CC25

You’ll soon have Circuit Cellar’s 25th (“CC25”) anniversary issue in your hands or on your PCs or mobile devices. Here are just a few of the exciting topics in the issue: Circuit Cellar in 1988, design/programming tips, engineers’ thoughts on the future of embedded tech, and much more. It’s going to be a classic.

Well, there’s certainly a lot of publishing-related innovation going on at our headquarters. And I know you’re equally busy at your workbenches. Just be sure to schedule some quiet time this month to read the articles in this issue. Perhaps one of our authors will inspire you to take on your first project of the new year. We feature articles on topics ranging from an MCU-based helicopter controller to open-source hardware to embedded authentication to ’Net-based tools for energy efficiency. Enjoy!

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After decades of relentless progress, the evolutionary path of the silicon CMOS industry is finally approaching an end. Fundamental physical limitations do not enable silicon to scale beyond the 10-nm technology node without severely compromising a device’s performance. To reinforce the accelerating pace, there is an urgent and immediate need for alternative materials. Low-dimensional materials in general, and 2-D layered material in particular, are extremely interesting in this context. They offer unique electrical, optical, mechanical, and chemical properties. In addition, they feature excellent electrostatic integrity and inherent scalability, which makes them attractive from a technological standpoint. Graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and more recently the rich family of transition metal dichalcogenides—comprising Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), WS2, WSe2, and many more—have received a lot of scientific attention as the future of nanoelectronics. The most widely studied material, grapheme, had reported intrinsic field effect mobility value as high as 10,000 cm2/Vs. However, the absence of an energy gap in the electronic band structure of grapheme, along with the challenges associated with making a stable interface with the gate dielectric, raises a lot of concern for grapheme-based nanoelectronics for logic applications. Hence, it paves the way for semiconducting 2-D materials such as MoS2 and others.

MoS2 is a stack of single layers held together by weak van der Waals interlayer interaction, and, therefore, enables micromechanical exfoliation of one or a few layers—similar to the fabrication of graphene from graphite. It is a semiconductor with an indirect bandgap of 1.2 eV. Single- and multilayer MoS2 field-effect transistors (FETs) with high on/off-current ratios (108) and excellent subthreshold swing (74 mV/decade) close to the ideal limit have been demonstrated. Basic integrated circuits (e.g., inverters and ring oscillators) have been reported. And initial studies also indicate that MoS2 has great potential in future nanoelectronics, sensing, and energy harvesting.

While there is a growing interest in MoS2-based nanoelectronics devices, the practice of evaluating their potential usefulness for electronic applications is still in its infancy since we don’t have a complete picture of their performance potential and scaling limits. My research addresses the major issues about the realization of high-performance logic devices based on ultra-thin MoS2 flakes. One of the major challenges in the realization of high-performance nano devices arises from the fact that these nanostructures need to be connected to the “outside” world to capitalize on their ultimate potential. Any interface between a low-dimensional nanostructure and a 3-D metal contact will inevitably affect the total system’s performance, which will strongly depend on the said contact’s quality. We have demonstrated that through a proper understanding and design of source/drain contacts and the right choice of the number of MoS2 layers to use, the excellent intrinsic properties of this 2-D material can be realized. Using scandium contacts on 10-nm-thick exfoliated MoS2 flakes that are covered by a 15-nm Al2O3 film, record high mobilities of 700 cm2/Vs are achieved at room temperature. This breakthrough is largely attributed to the fact that we succeeded in eliminating contact resistance effects that limited the device performance in the past unrecognized. We have also investigated the ultimate scaling potential of multilayer MoS2 field effect transistors (FETs) with channel lengths ranging from 1 µm down to 50 nm. Our results indicate that the multilayer MoS2 FETs are extremely resilient to short channel effects. We have demonstrated record high drive current density of 2.5 mA/µm and record high transconductance of 500 µs/µm for a 50-nm-long MoS2 transistor, which are comparable to state-of-the-art silicon technology.

In short, MoS2 preserves all the important properties of silicon with the added advantage of an ultra-thin layer structure, which allows for aggressive channel length scaling down to 2 nm and, therefore, has the potential to outperform silicon beyond the 10-nm technology node. Properly nourishing the development of MoS2 can be a real game changer for the future of the micro- and nanoelectronics industry.—by Saptarshi Das, Circuit Cellar 270, January 2012

Electrical engineering is frequently about solving problems. Success requires a smart plan of action and the proper tools. But as all designers know, getting started can be difficult. We’re here to help.

You don’t have to procrastinate or spend a fortune on tools to start building your own electronic circuits. As engineer/columnist Jeff Bachiochi has proved countless times during the past 25 years, there are hardware and software tools that fit any budget. In Circuit Cellar‘s 25th Anniversary issue, he offers some handy tips on building a tool set for successful electrical engineering. Bachiochi writes:

“In this essay, I’ll cover the “build” portion of the design process. For instance, I’ll detail various tips for prototyping, circuit wiring, enclosure preparation, and more. I’ll also describe several of the most useful parts and tools (e.g., protoboards, scopes, and design software) for working on successful electronic design projects. When you’re finished with this essay, you’ll be well on your way to completing a successful electronic design project.

The Prototyping Process

Prototyping is an essential part of engineering. Whether you’re working on a complicated embedded system or a simple blinking LED project, building a prototype can save you a lot of time, money, and hassle in the long run. You can choose one of three basic styles of prototyping: solderless breadboard, perfboard, and manufactured PCB. Your project goals, your schedule, and your circuit’s complexity are variables that will influence your choice. (I am not including styles like flying leads and wire-wrapping.) …

Prototyping Tools

The building phase of a design might include wiring up your circuit design and altering an enclosure to provide access to any I/O on the PCB. Let’s begin with some tools that you will need for circuit prototyping.

The nearby photo shows a variety of small tools that I use when wiring a perfboard or assembling a manufactured PCB. The needle-nose pliers/cutter is the most useful.

These are my smallest hand tools. With them I can poke, pinch, bend, cut, smooth, clean, and trim parts, boards, and enclosures. I can use the set of special driver tips to open almost any product that uses security screws.

Don’t skimp on this; a good pair will last many years. …

Once everything seems to be in order, you can fill up the sockets. You might need to provide some stimulus if you are building something like a filter. A small waveform generator is great for this. There are even a few hand probes that will provide outputs that can stimulate your circuitry. An oscilloscope might be the first “big ticket” item in which you invest. There are some inexpensive digital scope front ends that use an app running on a PC for display and control, but I suggest a basic analog scope (20 MHz) if you can swing it (starting at less than $500).

If the circuit doesn’t perform the expected task, you should give the wiring job a quick once over. Look to see if something is missing, such as an unconnected or misconnected wire. If you don’t find something obvious, perform a complete continuity check of all the components and their connections using an ohmmeter.

I use a few different meters. One has a transistor checker. Another has a high-current probe. For years I used a small battery-powered hand drill before purchasing the Dremel and drill press. The tweezers are actually an SMT parts measurer. Many are unmarked and impossible to identify without using this device (and the magnifier).

It usually will be a stupid mistake. To do a complete troubleshooting job, you’ll need to know how the circuit is supposed to work. Without that knowledge, you can’t be expected to know where to look and what to look for.

Make a Label

You’ll likely want to label your design… Once printed, you can protect a label by carefully covering it with a single strip of packing tape.

The label for this project came straight off a printer. Using circuit-mount parts made assembling the design a breeze.

A more expensive alternative is to use a laminating machine that puts your label between two thin plastic sheets. There are a number of ways to attach your label to an enclosure. Double-sided tape and spray adhesive (available at craft stores) are viable options.”

Ready to start innovating? There’s no time like now to begin your adventure.